What is online lead generation?

Posted on September 10th, 2018,
by Sarah Wragg

Lead generation

Lead generation is vital for business. Without new leads your company is never going to expand its client base.

A lead is someone who shows an interest in your company, whether that’s through signing up to your newsletter, or making an enquiry about your products or services.

Lead generation is a way of attracting people and encouraging them to engage with your business, with the ultimate aim in getting them to buy from you. Leads can be generated in a number of ways, although many techniques can be frustrating for your potential customers who find them annoying or invasive, i.e. telephone cold calling, junk mail, advertising etc.

Online engagement and lead generation

Social media has enabled many companies to build leads organically. By raising brand awareness on a regular basis through tweets, posts on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, the aim is to get people interested in you and see you as an expert in your field and, as they become more familiar with your brand, get to trust you more and more. Eventually, this should lead to further interaction, with the ultimate intention that they will become paying customers and brand advocates.

Content marketing, particularly blogs, is an excellent way of building up enough organic interest in your brand to begin generating leads. Not only does posting regular blogs ensure the search engines are more likely to rank your brand higher in the results, they also help people gain trust in your company – so if you want to position yourself as an expert or thought leader, write considered blogs that show you know what you’re talking about. This can be done by commenting on industry news and events, giving free advice to potential clients, talking about some of the challenges you’ve faced (and overcome of course!), or writing case studies.

If you need to create leads more quickly, online advertising, handled correctly, can be hugely effective. Whether it’s on Google, Facebook, Twitter or any other platform, choosing the right keywords and parameters can really pay off, often for a surprisingly reasonable outlay. Just make sure that your advert links to a landing page that makes it easy for customers to buy; directing them to the wrong landing page will result in a high bounce rate, fewer sales and poor ROI.

In the next blog we’ll look at specific ideas about how to increase online lead generation. But in the meantime we’d be very happy to talk to you about your online lead generation needs. Call us on 01992 582 824 or email welcome@cariadmarketing.com.